HELP (not serious, but to me it is)Support

I JUST got my Moto Droid..... what is the first couple of things i should be doing...? apps, settings, save to's..... tell me quickly cause i am about to veg out ALL NIGHT tinkering. i already did an OS update upon the store salesman recommended.. i just want to know what step/s i should to gaurantee the best experience....

battery condition? screen protector? case/shield/holster.... got body glove and feel as if a lil too bulky for my liking, and the VZW screen protectors, but not sure about those either.

I dont use any case or screen protector cause the glass they use on the droid is amaizingly resiliant, I forget the name of it but theres a video somewhere on here. App wise I would get Dolphin as the web browser, Handcent for the messanger, shazam for song id on the radio, google sky, google goggles, tune wiki for playing music (i like it cause it downloads the lyrics for alot of the songs), pandora or iheartradio are nice to have, air painter is fun but kinda gimiky, b&b gallary gives pinch and zoom for viewing pics, layar, mabilo is a must have for ring tones, sportstap for scores, police stream (its a payed app but u get a police scanner on your phone for many countys) and dildroid is a good conversation app, as well as bonjour madame for a nice daily pic .

I'm using a screen protector because I'm paranoid but otherwise no case and holding up just fine.

The 'Power control' widget is probably the most useful built-in widget...lets you turn on and off radios, sync, ect.

I'd recommend checking out swype virtual keyboard (theres info in different threads on how to get this...you'll need to download Astro file manager from the market, but that is generally a good app to have.)

pandora is probably my most used app, beautiful widget and pure calendar agenda my favorite widgets. Home++ is a nice home replacement app when you start running out of screen space

That feeling will take a long, long time to wear off. I'll try to avoid repeats, but with so many apps, I'm too lazy to recheck everyone's post.

Get yourself Astro File Manager, it lets you move and rename and so on and so on. Just get it.

I'd recommend the Amazon non-MP3 app.

If you want to do a lot of music and video sideloading without plugging in your usb, AndFTP is the best ftp client, lets you use your home wifi network. I think Swiftp or SwiFTP or Swift FTP is an ftp server for your phone, but I found it's easier to run the server on your computer and the client on your phone.

Get Gmote. You can use that same wifi network to control a media player on your computer. Yes, you just got a free, huge touchscreen media remote for your computer.

Locale is fun to mess around with, but depending on how you spend your day, it might not be that useful. If you spend a lot of time turning your phone's silent/vibrate/ring depending on meetings or classes, get it.

Android Agenda Widget is the best widget I've found for syncing your google calendar to a good looking, customizeable widget.

Apps Organizer is good for organizing folders of your ever growing and changing apps library.

Backgrounds is good for finding backgrounds that don't involve T&A, and it can even autochange your background based on a series of things you've favorited.

I found GDocs good for a simple, lightweight notepad that will sync with Google Documents. It can't handle opening other formats though, but more often I just want to write down something I thought of, or quickly refer to something I thought of while at my computer.

Google Listen is good for podcasts, but it doesn't really do as much in the cloud as you'd expect from a Google App these days. And it doesn't handle all of my podcasting needs- For example, I also use Stitcher. I also don't really recommend Police Scanner. If you can find the internet stream addresses online for your town's police band, there are internet stream apps that are free. You're paying money for someone to assemble that list for you, he doesn't maintain the streams in any fashion. I think I use DroidLive or Droid Live as my shoutcast-type streaming app, and I have a couple NYPD and FDNY bands favorited in that.

Meridian is the music player I use for downloaded stuff, they all have their pros and cons, but Meridian is the one I found that (when I checked) had a widget like the default Music app. The others didn't really have home screen widgets, and I've found that essential.

Mobile Defense is good if you lose your phone, but it also won't save your battery from dying once its lost.

NetCounter is good for getting a gauge on how much your using your data plan, which on Verizon is 5 gigs per month.

OpenTable is cool, but personally not enough restaurants support it. Other good restaurant apps are Places, Where, and Aloqa.

Pandora, Last.fm, iheartradio and Slacker are all fairly essential, though Pandora probably most of all unless you're already a heavy last.fm user.

If you have a laptop and often find yourself in places without free wifi, and you also have netcounter installed and running, get Pdanet. But I'd avoid a lot of video downloading/streaming, that can eat up 5 gigs fast.

Photoshop has Photoshop.com Mobile, which does pretty much what you need it to. Cropping and the like, plus some minor effects.

SaveMMS lets you save MMS attachments to your SD card.

Twidroid Pro is what I use for twitter, but there are some pretty good free ones, like Swift. (Not the FTP Swift app I was talking about.) I've heard good things about Babbler for Facebook, but I don't like Facebook enough to warrant getting the paid version, and Babbler Lite didn't impress me.

SleepTimer is a great app, since very, very few media players come with a sleep timer function. All SleepTimer really does is force kill a preset-by-you process, so it will probably even work for something like Pandora. In other words, you don't need to wait for the app to officially support whatever music you listen to. It also has a really cool function I've discovered. You're listening to music to fall asleep, and you set the timer to 20 minutes. Twenty minutes go by and you haven't really fallen asleep, and all of a sudden your music shuts off. Now you have to roll over, grab your phone, open your eyes, play something again, reset the sleep timer.. And afterwards you're even more awake than you were when the music shut off. What SleepTimer will do is play a quick chime when you have one minute left on your sleep. You then reach over and shake the phone a little, and bam, another 20 minutes of sleep. That's it. Chime, shake, it chimes again at you to let you know you added more sleep. Really, really cool.

Now, there's also White Noise and Sleepy Time. These aren't sleep timers for your music, they play nature sounds and fans and the like. Like the white noise machines you see in Skymall. They have their own built in sleep timers.

Movies, by Flixster is also a good app. And I think Fandango came out with their own app too. Showtimes, trailers, even buying tickets.

One thing that really helped me was, install Spare Parts app and use it to turn off all window animations and transition animations. It really speeds up doing things since there are no animations. One thing youll notice right away is coming back from the lock screen is incredibly fast. I would also get a file explorer to make things like that easier, and an App/Task manager to kill unnessecary apps and make uninstalling easier.

Oh, and if youre a twitter fan twidroid is is a great free twitter client.
Last.fm is great for personalized streaming radio.
And, home++ is a really great home replacement app.

messenger13 give me a break..... treat everyone like a newb and you'll be hated on here bud. i didnt know after i removed the app i had to delete the icons/widgets on the homescreen. would that have been easier to just post than your comment. yeah i know the search button, but isnt the point of forums is to discuss stuff, not just "search"

craz, THANKS. i just dont know where to start. i have been reading you guys on the forums for about a month now in anticipation and now that i have the device physically in my hand i am going to explode! sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better/different than my old storm

messenger13 give me a break..... treat everyone like a newb and you'll be hated on here bud. i didnt know after i removed the app i had to delete the icons/widgets on the homescreen. would that have been easier to just post than your comment. yeah i know the search button, but isnt the point of forums is to discuss stuff, not just "search"

I'm using a screen protector because I'm paranoid but otherwise no case and holding up just fine.

Click to expand...

I had bought a $30 dollar screen protector and then replaced it with a $2 one from a store called " 5 Below" The cheaper one looks soo much better and the touch responce feels much nicer, as for the case I had gotten one from Verizon for 20 bucks and saved me a few times, a buddy of mine dropped his droid and actually chipped it in the top right corner...

The harder, more rigid, slightly tinted fingerprint (maybe its a privacy shield?) that my VZW store rep was pretty good in terms of protecting. But in terms of looks and responsiveness, no chance. In fact, I might go put my phantomskin on right now.

Let that become your friend. You don't need a task manager, the Droid does it built in. That right there will show you what applications or widgets are running. It'll make sure you'll have running only what you want running.

That is so much more cumbersome than just using Advanced Task Killer Free. I LOVE my Advanced Task Killer! The only comment I'd make though is do NOT let Advanced Task Killer load on startup, or keep running. Just use it for momentary purposes.

Great ideas! I've had my Droid just ove a month, and still need to know many of these things. The YouTube is amazing and always gets the 'wow' from people when you find something quickly and watch it on the spot!
Enjoy, and keep your eyes on the posts. I learn new things everytime I visit the forum